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Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

npr.org

141–150 of 220 posts

Re: Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

#141
post #44

Reading the comments here, these tactics were very successful!

Seeing how "pro-gas" comments tend to get greyed-out reminds me very much of the way those who went again the "current thing" were treated during the SARS2 pandemic. Why do many people here have to be so religious about these issues? Why has "supporting the current thing" been turned into something resembling a mantra? I wrote a fairly long comment [1] on my experience with different types of heat sources for cooking…

Its really weird, when you look at the backlash after the Ukraine war. Gas (the cheapest way to heat and cook) was extinguished (pun intended) overnight. So now lets rally for electric, which is quite expensive in California, and I know, lets shut down nuclear power plants, sack coal, and remove renewable clean hydro at the same time. What could possibly go wrong? If that doesn't look like a conspiracy (at least to those in CA) I dont know what does. Make the poor suffer even more, so you can point to the government "programs" and "rebates" you offer to "offset" the high cost of energy, and use their suffering against republicans who put their foot down about sabotaging their own constituents. It's sick.

Re: Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

#142

- "Environmental epidemiologist Josiah Kephart studies pollution from cooking. In this 2021 photo he measured nitrogen dioxide levels from cooking in his kitchen. At right: A nitrogen dioxide air monitor shows 0.159 parts per million, or 159 parts per billion. That's above the World Health Organization hourly guideline of 106 ppb. Kephart has since replaced the gas stove with an electric one." That's *barely* above t…

NPR could do so, but that wouldn't advance the agenda. This non-issue isn't being pushed by mistake.

Re: Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

#143
post #35

I have a gas range, gas water heater, gas logs, and gas backup heat. My gas bill is around $15 a month. My home has proper ventilation to the outside and I have no intention of converting a cheap gas bill into a high electric bill.

Why do you think it’s so cheap?

Re: Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

#144
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we need a carbon tax. Your gas bill needs to be much higher.

A good start would be to have the same tax on electricity and gas. It's absurd that gas is heavily subsidized in most of Europe: https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eus-energy-taxa... Fortunately, I live in one of the few countries which don't subsidize gas (Sweden). When I visit the continent and see a gas stove, it feels like going to a museum. Induction stoves are so much better.

We should let people decide what sort of stove is best for themselves rather than pushing one from the top down. Also, most people who are pressed to prematurely replace their stove will choose the cheapest option, which if pushed away from gas would be resistive electric not induction.

Re: Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

#145
Just let people have stoves.

I’ve noticed these types of “shade” articles that are strange and boring that an org like NPR dedicates people’s time to writing this.

The goal isn’t to eliminate gas stoves. They don’t matter. It seems strange that anyone cares whether I have natural gas for stoves or not.

Re: Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

#146
post #51
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induction ranges heat up water faster and use less energy than gas ranges: https://www.treehugger.com/which-more-energy-efficient-cooki... Since you mentioned that you have backup heating, I assume you don’t live in a very cold climate, in which case a heat pump for your backup heat and water heater is your most efficient lowest cost option, not a gas system. Part of your gas bill is just paying the gas company for a…

Heating up water quickly is almost never a use case. It is not on the critical path for optimizations either. Unless you subsist on boiling noodles when you’re late for a meeting.

Main thing induction seems actually worse for is being able to lift the pan above cooking surface and differentially heat different parts of the pan, particularly useful for Chinese/wok cooking.

Re: Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

#147
post #40
post #35

I have a gas range, gas water heater, gas logs, and gas backup heat. My gas bill is around $15 a month. My home has proper ventilation to the outside and I have no intention of converting a cheap gas bill into a high electric bill.

This is why we need a carbon tax. Your gas bill needs to be much higher.

Yeah, it will totally be $16 to reflect the minimal carbon used for the utilities GP mentioned.

I don’t think a carbon tax is economically efficient, but I’m starting to think it is emotionally efficient to just let people do all the minimal little things that I don’t think warrant discussion (paper straws, dishwashers, gas logs).

Re: Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

#148
post #35

I have a gas range, gas water heater, gas logs, and gas backup heat. My gas bill is around $15 a month. My home has proper ventilation to the outside and I have no intention of converting a cheap gas bill into a high electric bill.

Do you source your own gas? I live in Texas, fossil fuel and natural gas state, and gas bill is between $50 - $255/month. This is with barely any cooking.

Re: Gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations

#149
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we need a carbon tax. Your gas bill needs to be much higher.

A good start would be to have the same tax on electricity and gas. It's absurd that gas is heavily subsidized in most of Europe: https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eus-energy-taxa... Fortunately, I live in one of the few countries which don't subsidize gas (Sweden). When I visit the continent and see a gas stove, it feels like going to a museum. Induction stoves are so much better.

I live in Sweden as well, I used to live in the Netherlands. The former is close to gas-free while the Netherlands is (or was) one of the most gas-dependent countries in Europe owing to the discovery and exploitation of large gas reserves in the north of the country and the North Sea. I have used gas, resistive electric, halogen electric, induction electric as well as wood stoves for cooking. I wrote a sizeable comment on the virtues and vices of induction earlier in this thread and found out one of its parents had been killed, most likely due to its author's clearly stated preference for cooking on gas. This is what I wrote on the subject in reply to a comment very similar (but much shorter) than yours which simply proclaimed induction to be 'superior':

That all depends on what you're cooking. I have used just about all types of cooking contraptions there are ranging from an open fire through a pit fire, several types of "cultivated" fires (wood-fired stoves, BBQs etc), propane/butane/methane gas burners of various types, coil/cast_iron/ceramic/halogen electric and induction stoves. I normally cook on a wood-fired stove seeing how as I live on a farm in the Swedish countryside with plenty of forest on my doorstep which I also use to heat the house and whose branches I cut up for the stove. I do have one of those cast-iron resistance heated electric ranges next to the wood-fired stove but I only use it as a parking lot for pans etc. I also have a few single-hob induction plates around which I sometimes use outside when we're not supposed to light fires due to extreme drought etc. When I lived in the Netherlands I bought a "gas-free" house which meant I had to use electricity for cooking. Induction was supposed to be the bees knees so I built myself a range with an induction cooker on top and a hot-air oven underneath it. The thing worked fine for some types of cooking but it royally sucked for e.g. stir-fry cooking using a wok. Even the flat-bottom version I got did not come close to the real thing on a gas stove or wood fire.

Now, more than 20 years later I regularly use my mother's new induction stove when I visit her in the Netherlands. That thing still sucks for stir-frying, no matter which pan I use. There is just not enough power to be had on a residential induction cooker to reach the quick heat needed to make a good nasi goreng (i.e. Indonesian-Dutch fried rice). On the wood-fired stove here at home I use a Chinese wok which hangs directly in the fire and as such is close to perfect. The sad part of this is that my mother's previous range had a special wok burner which, while not as capable as the wood-fired stove, at least made it possible to quickly reach a good heat and keep it. Alas, she felt she needed to go with the flow and had that range swapped out for an anaemic induction cooker which is supposed to be able to run 2 plates at max power (~2 kW) at the same time but does not even seem to be capable of that without dropping one of them a notch down.

If you're comparing commercial induction cookers to gas stoves the comparison might hold. There are special induction plates for using a round-bottomed wok which may also lead to better results. Those are not what most people will get at home when they replace their "dangerous" gas range though.

Induction's pro's are its reaction speed, cleanliness, electrical efficiency and sometimes price (single-hob plates at e.g. IKEA are dirt-cheap) but that is about it. Its cons are the lack of power in most residential ranges, the lack of fine-grained control, the sensitivity of the ceramic top plate - it gets scratched easily when you have an 'active' cooking style as well is liable to break when confronted with heavy cast-iron skillets in the hands of inexperienced users, this is true for all ceramic cookers and not specific to induction - and the power electronics (I have repaired two induction cookers already, one of them (a commercial single-hob plate) had a blown out capacitor (literally - loads of black smoke blew out off the thing), the other (Siemens) suffered from a whole bank of broken power transistors (RJH60T4 IGBTs). Finally, confusingly in the light of my remark about single-hob plates being cheap, its often high price. Induction still seems to be priced as a "luxury" good while in reality it is fairly cheap to produce, the only relatively expensive part being the power electronics (where "expensive" means "a few tens of euro's for the requisite transistors and capacitors as well as the copper induction coils).

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